


Who is my darling?

by islasands



Series: Lambski [63]
Category: Adam Lambert (Musician)
Genre: Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-26
Updated: 2012-07-26
Packaged: 2017-11-10 18:44:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/469488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/islasands/pseuds/islasands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of the loveliest things about being in love is the way your eyes meet from time to time. </p><p>The song, "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", is a 1957 folk song written by Ewan MacColl for his wife Peggy Seeger. It is sung here by Roberta Flack. It just seemed to fit this story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who is my darling?

"The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face"

  


Roberta Flack

  


 

 

His friend continued talking while she adjusted her clothing to allow her infant access to her breast which, when it appeared, resembled a drooping white fruit emerging from the dark foliage of her clothing. The nipple looked like the stalk of that fruit and the baby, feeling its nudge against his cheek, frantically turned his head to and fro. Beads of sweat decorated his forehead. His tiny hands grasped at the air. His mother held the back of his head and guided the nipple into his mouth. He sucked greedily and placed his hand on her breast, scratching at it jealously as though to prevent it from escaping. There was a lull in the conversation and the baby’s immoderate gulping filled the silence. Everyone laughed. He looked up at his lover who was standing the doorway. Their eyes met. 

_our eyes are always meeting  
_ _across rooms times and places  
_ _as though it must be true that we have already met in other lives  
_ _and our story is not new or invincible  
_ _and our touches, like the wind or sun, have already occurred_

__

_as though you are coming towards my house  
_ _to the porch where I am standing waiting  
_ _with a war finally over and your tow coloured hair in your eyes  
_ _and a relief so overwhelming neither of us can speak  
_ _and even the air we are breathing feels angelically shy_

__

_or as though in a dark theatre  
_ _where singers are singing about an impossible love  
_ _your hand creeps along my thigh and finds mine  
_ _and we let our fingers discover the braille of our feelings  
_ _writing themselves note by note in the bars of the song_

__

_or as though we are riding side by side in a procession  
_ _through narrow streets where horses’ feet clatter  
_ _and the trumpets sound wistful and women are swaying  
_ _and we are consumed with holiness the way our favourite cheese  
_ _is filled with the sharp creaminess of time_

__

The ensuing conversation was entirely feminine, referencing mysteries of the birth process that he didn’t really care to unravel. “When _my_ waters broke,” a woman began. He only half listened. His friend asked if he would like to hold the baby. As it was placed in his arms he remembered a line from a movie, “Mind his little fontanelle.” He gingerly cradled the infant, wondering if he was minding it properly. The infant looked drunk. It raised a single hand and waved it left and right as though in tipsy benediction. It was such a small being. Unbelievably tiny. He put his finger against the waving hand and it immediately curled itself around it. He waited to see if any paternal feelings would awaken but they didn’t. Both of their gestures had been the involuntary, indiscriminate explorations of prehensile hands and primitive brains. “He’s beautiful,” he said, because that is what you say. His lover who had come to sit beside him, nodded in agreement. They looked at the baby together. Then their eyes met.

_yes, our eyes meet even though we are well and truly past  
_ _the faltering steps of a new love and its improbably tentative kisses  
_ _we already know the preferences of our intimacy  
_ _such as how we like our eggs and our orgasms  
_ _and which side of the bed we each like to sleep on_

__

_yet even so they meet as though we are in the heart of a forest  
_ _beneath giant leaves upon which rain pleasantly drums  
_ _and the smell of the earth is like a drug you take for sleeping  
_ _and we feel satisfied because we are busy taking turns  
_ _at shielding each other from the cold_

__

_or they meet as though we have lived in an apartment all our lives  
_ _where the paint is peeling and our Frieda Kahlo print has faded  
_ _and the pale blue enamel on our tin cups has chipped  
_ _and we stand at the window in each other’s arms  
_ _while the poetry of our lives plays, haltingly, on an ancient record player_

__

_or perhaps they meet across a cabin in a frozen place  
_ _where we have worked hard all our lives  
_ _and our chief pleasure is an enormous pile of wood  
_ _whose flames, when we set the logs alight, defy the colors of snow and night  
_ _and redden our faces while we read out of date newspapers_

__

The infant was laid on a rug on the floor so everyone could admire the miracle of its working parts; ten toes and ten fingers, an oddly circular barrel of a stomach, a brow that already had the power to crinkle up in rage, and genitals, of course, which showed off their expressiveness by sending up an arc of urine that fell right into the infant’s mouth. His body went rigid at the sensation. “Like father, like son,” someone said and everyone laughed despite the joke being too obscure to make any sense. The mother deftly cleaned up her child and replaced its clothing. The baby cried. She wrapped it up in a white blanket, wrapping it so snugly that it looked like a tiny, limbless ghost. “He’s like a little bomb,” she said possessively. She smiled down at him as she excused herself and her child. Time for both of them to go to bed. He looked across the room at his lover. Their eyes met.

_at all times now there is an interrupting silence  
_ _such as when eyes meet because something inevitable is taking place  
_ _like a wave preparing to break, or a cloud darkening, or the moon becoming full  
_ _or a door closing so that love can exert its physical strength  
_ _or a window opening to let the smell of rain come in_

__

_and it comes whenever it likes, as though we do not own our own love!  
_ _our eyes meet and we feel there is something we cannot fathom  
_ _something as countless as stars bubbling in the cauldron of space  
_ _or the unimportant number of blades of grass it takes to make a lawn  
_ _or the gentle futility in the number of stones beneath a beach_

__

_our eyes meet because we have answered a question that can never be answered  
_ _and we are holding onto something that lies both within and out of reach..._

__

They looked in on their friend before they left. There was a nightlight beside the bed and the the room smelled of sun-dried laundry and lilacs. They approached the bed holding hands, then separated to sit on either side. “Goodnight, goodnight,” they said. “Goodnight you two,” the woman whispered, looking from one to the other. The baby was asleep on her breast but even in sleep it could not help the occasional suck. “He’s like a limpet on a rock,” she said, looking down, and the baby, as though understanding perfectly what she had said, opened its alien black eyes and calmly met the gaze of his mother. “Who is my darling?” she said as their eyes met. "Who is my darling?" The lovers' eyes also met and held across the peaceful divide of the bed.

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End file.
